Tierno Bokar (1875-1939), African mystic and Muslim spiritual teacher, was remarkable for the drama of his life story (which was made into a recent play directed by Peter Brook). His message of religious tolerance and universal love is profoundly important in a world where different faiths are often at odds with each other.

Of all the European powers, the Dutch were considered the most tolerant of minority religious practices in their colonies. In The Expansion of Tolerance, a pair of historians examines this unusual sensitivity in the case of the seventeenth-century Dutch colonies of Brazil.